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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Unconventional Art That Transcends the Ordinary

The element that exists beyond the commonplace, the conventional, that offers the viewer a glimpse of what there is at the quantum level, at the level of the divine is what matters to me as a spectator and as an artist. A higher standard. The high road. I may as well spell it out. I am interested in the unconventional and in a quality of transcendence in art and art photography. Mundane art that does not suggest in some way, the spirit, can be enjoyable to a certain degree but for me, it is missing the essential. In a way it's like watching PBS instead of commercial TV. You want value. You want something that will enrich your life. You don't get it very often on commercial TV but then, there's PBS and you can go there for what you and your children for that matter can find value in the viewing.

As an artist and as a spectator and art enthusiast, I am after the essence, the essential and the spiritual in art and, if it shows itself, for me the art work, the image, the photograph, the song, whatever the form it is, the work of art is sublime.

Is it not true that the sublime has to be there in some context for a painting or photograph to be considered a masterpiece? The masterpiece has a real, almost tangible edge over lesser expressions of art that are often enjoyable yes, but, how overshadowed it is by the perfection we can see in the masterpiece.

A little dove of a masterpiece or a big splash of one, it matters not. What matters is that there be some element of that which goes beyond the material, the mundande, the physicality of the thing itself and gives the viewer a blessing of some kind. And at the same time, a glimpse of the divinity of the artist who achieves at the level she or he does in exhibited, the divine out of the mundane, out of the mud of pigments or the sparkle of pixels something magnificent comes.

Transcendence is important in art, just like it is in life in those rare moments when it can be found. Shock art often if not always sets itself apart from the divine or transcendent in my opinion because, somewhere along the line and it accepts itself as a debasement of art and is content with itself as such. Not nice for the viewer. What can we come away with? It isn't really art. It can be called "creatve" or any number of other things but, as an art that elevates the viewer and provides in some inscrutable way, the divine - shock art and schlock art will not rise to that occasion by virtue (no pun intended) of its own intrinsic value.

To my mind, when it is said that a work of art is a "work of genius," it is only because the work of art points in this direction, the direction of the spirit and the divine otherwise, it is small but small, in a not nice way.

Small can be beautiful too as we all know but, more beautiful with a strong sense of the larger context for example, the beauty of a blade of grass rises out of the ground approaching the cosmos, if it only could. The meaning of life in a blade of grass can be divine too but that's a tiny example of natural beauty, God's little masterpiece.

Everyday art is fine enough, we can't always have Pablo Picasso or this one or that one, the greats and genius every day, everywhere but, the sacred needs to be there in our lives more, much more than the profane.

Art that enriches our lives and that has a component of the divine needs to be in our lives far more than the other far lesser forms. We lose out on the gift tthat he geniuses of our world have struggled so hard to give us too when inferior, degraded and degrading art rises in prominence and value.

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Oscar Wilde‘s statement above is sadly true:Art is useless.But the truth in this idea can be taken further and from another perspective, truth may also be seen in the following statement: “The jewel is in the lotus.”In a further analysis the simple, fundamental truth may just be that Art in itself is the flower.Art is the flower of youth and the lotus blossom of old age.Art is the flower of antiquity and the gift of the modern world, thorny though it may be at times."